Participating artists:Mio Al-Hashimy, Sijo Choi Kim, Tobias Kurpat, Jiayi Li und Sun Zhengke
Venue:Leipzig Book Fair/ Forum KI & Mensch, Hall 2, B601/C600
Partner:(Un)Learning Digitalities – Programm für Praxis und Theorie des Digitalen (Eliza Goldox)
The contribution of the (Un)Learning Digitalities programme of the HGB Leipzig brings together student artistic positions that understand AI not as a neutral tool, but as a hallucination, as a resistant system, as an instrument for re-narration and re-historicisation, as a metaphor and as a humanised system. The artists use AI specifically to generate alternative narratives, reorganise collective and individual memories and critically question existing power structures as well as normative and historical narratives. The four positions within the lecture performance consider the interweaving of technology, artistic imagination and infrastructure as a political field of action. Algorithms, self-trained models, fine-tuning, motion capture and 3D processes act as operative actors that actively reorganise reality, memories, bodies, communities and desires and make existing power relations, normative structures and historical narratives critically visible. Infrastructure is not understood as an invisible framework, but as a formative, effective factor that shapes, reproduces and transforms social order, collectivity and social dynamics. The projects also unfold a temporal and performative dimension that opens up spaces for alternative experiences, critical thinking and collective appropriation.
(Un)Learning Digitalities is about consciously unlearning dominant technology narratives: moving away from myths of progress, efficiency logics and technical neutrality towards a critical, poetic and political examination of AI as a cultural and infrastructural actor.
